


Hours Just Before The Dawn

by thesometimeswarrior



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode: s03e19 Sozin's Comet Part 2 The Old Masters, Family, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Hurt/Comfort, Teacher-Student Relationship, making amends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-27 03:30:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13872171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: They sit in another silence, this one dominated by the weight of what they both know the morning will bring. Katara can sense the unspoken words between them, and there is a begrudging uncertainty that, she suspects, neither of them want to acknowledge.Finally, she admits to herself that this, tonight, might be the last opportunity that they have to share such words, and speaks. “Can I ask you something?”“Certainly.”“How did Gran-Gran react to seeing you again?”Katara and Pakku, on the eve of Sozin's Comet.





	Hours Just Before The Dawn

She should not be surprised as she is, Katara reflects, that no one seems to be asleep in the camp, despite the late hour. All the men busy themselves—this one polishes his sword, that one practices Firebending forms, another steeps tea—waiting, she knows, for the dawn. It’s something she understands well, the illusion of control that busywork can lend, especially on a night like tonight—when the summer air is hot and sticky, and the future is both so important and so uncertain.

(The White Lotus _will_ win tomorrow. Ba Sing Se _will_ be free. And Aang _will_ come back, he will—he _will_ , he _has_ to—and he’ll defeat the Fire Lord too, and he’ll be fine, and it won’t matter that she doesn’t know where he is now, or that she’s all out of Spirit Water…At this time tomorrow, everything will be good, and everyone, Sokka and Zuko and Aang and everyone will be alive and free and happy…and Aang will…he _will_ …)

“May I join you?” 

She looks up, roused from her racing mind, to see her teacher (still teacher, not grandfather, not yet…) standing there, the lines in his face prominent in the dim moonlight. “Of course.”

He sits down next to her, holds the silence for a moment, before speaking softly. “Word of your Waterbending spreads, you know. There are those that say that you are the greatest Waterbender alive today.” He pauses. “Your accomplishments are your own, of course— _you_ worked hard to get as far as you are, and I won’t pretend to take credit for it—but you should know that as your teacher, I am very proud.”

She smiles a soft, strained smile, bows her head in appreciation. “Thank you, Master Pakku.”

They sit in another silence, this one dominated by the weight of what they both know the morning will bring. Katara can sense the unspoken words between them, and there is a begrudging uncertainty that, she suspects, neither of them want to acknowledge.

Finally, she admits to herself that this, tonight, might be the last opportunity that they have to share such words, and speaks. “Can I ask you something?”

“Certainly.”

“How did Gran-Gran react to seeing you again?”

Pakku exhales in a half-chuckle. “I did wonder if you would want to discuss the matter. But then I was surprised; you responded so favorably—”

“Because I didn’t realize what you were saying at first! And I was happy, because I love Gran-Gran, and by now I really respect you. But then you mentioned the betrothal necklace, and I remembered what it must have been like for Gran-Gran all those years ago, and…” Her voice fades.

He nods in solemn understanding. “Kanna was…surprised…to see me again. But she ignored me. We didn’t speak for the first several weeks I was there, except cursorily and formerly—the leader of her tribe instructing me, a lowly foreign volunteer, what needed to be done.”

“And you let her?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Do give me _some_ credit. There are things I learned from you.” A pause. “But I believe after a few weeks, we both found it difficult to continue in that manner. She confronted me one evening, demanded to know what I was really up to, why I had come.”

“What did you say?”

“The truth. That I was there to help. That I hadn’t realized just how dire the situation in the South had become until I had met you, and you shocked me out of my complacency and self-imposed ignorance.”

“Really? You told Gran-Gran that?”

“I did. And once I added that I had trained you—and how impressed I was with you—I think she started to believe that I really had changed since I was a teenager, and that I really didn’t have any ulterior motive in coming to the South.” He sighs. “Until that point, I think part of her believed that I was there to try to whisk her back to the North with me. And I hadn’t realized just how much that thought must have terrified her.”

Pakku’s gaze is distant, and Katara lets the silence hang, sensing there is more that he wants to say.

“Eventually I told her as much,” he continues, once he seems to return to himself. “And I offered something like an apology, though I blubbered so much I doubt I could tell you exactly what I said.” He pauses. “She didn’t _accept_ it exactly, but we started spending more time together.”

“And then you asked her to marry you.”

“No. I wasn’t planning to, actually. I assumed she wasn’t interested, and the last thing I wanted to do was give the impression that I was trying to ensnarl her.”

“But then—”

“She asked me. When the call came for White Lotus members, and I prepared to leave, she told me that she wanted to get married.” Pakku grins. “I was overjoyed.”

“But then when did you make the betrothal necklace? If you were getting ready to leave, when did you have time?”

“Oh, I made it months ago. But at the time it was just an old man indulging a private fantasy; I never planned on letting her see it, much less on giving it to her.” He sighs. “But the night before I left for Ba Sing Se, she was convinced that I was leaving on a suicide mission. That I wouldn’t return. I vowed to her that I would, and I gave her the necklace as a tangible symbol of that promise.”

Katara is silent for a moment, breathes, feels the moonlight on her skin and in her veins. Then she asks quietly, “ _Are_ we going to return from this tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

“You haven’t seen the Fire Nation like I have…And there’s so many of them, and the Comet is going to make them so strong…”

“I promised the love of my life, and I’m promising you. You know that I wouldn’t lie to one of my students, much less to my future granddaughter.” He smiles a smile just too large and strained to be fully genuine at her, pauses to allow her to absorb the weight of what he has just said, before continuing. “We will survive tomorrow. You have my word.”

Katara looks up at him for several long moments, before nodding a single time.

Pakku breaks the silence after another instant. “May I ask _you_ something?”

“Hm?”

“Do I have your blessing to marry Kanna?”

“I…” She hesitates, taken aback by the seriousness and the sudden vulnerability in his voice, by how deeply he seems to care how she responds, by the fact that he asked her at all. But then she realizes that after the past few minutes of their conversation she knows with an absolute certainty what her answer is. “Of course you do, Master Pakku.”

“Thank you, Katara,” he responds, softly, and she hears the doubt, the looming uncertainty, slip into his voice despite himself, as if no matter what he says, he too is afraid, but no matter what happens tomorrow, he is clinging to this sentiment. “That means a great deal to me.”

She smiles back at him—a temporary respite from what she knows is coming in the morning. But for this one moment, and perhaps just for the one moment, it is enough. 

“Welcome to the family,” she says, as they sit together and wait for the dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed. I love comments!


End file.
